Neil Durkin

Skimming back through my modest back catalogue of Telegraph blog posts the other day, it struck me that at least half of them so far have been about torture. Not a pleasant topic to write or read about. But readers read and, well, I carry on writing about it. Why?

First and foremost, I'm churning out these chunks of – sometimes stomach-turning – blog pieces because as an Amnesty campaigner that's what you do. Grab at any chance to communicate your stuff.

But it's also got to be said that torture is in the news. It is news. The CIA torture memos, Binyam Mohamed, alleged torture with M15 connivance in Pakistan, torture in Syria. Torture, torture, torture.

Is it getting more exposure? Is there more of it? Are people more prepared to talk about? Hard to say, I think. Every year Amnesty's big… Read More

The US State Department's naming of Iran as the "most active state sponsor of terrorism" in the world coincides with other alarming news out of Iran today.

This morning a call came through to my office at Amnesty telling me that a 22-year-old woman called Delara Derabi had been executed earlier today at Rasht Central Prison in north-west Iran.

This was pretty devastating. Darabi wasn't famous, but was certainly well-known in anti-death penalty campaigning circles. Myself and Amnesty colleagues had been working on her case for the past three years. Recently her lawyer Abdolsamad Khoramshah and human rights campaigners had been desperately trying to avert this woman's impending death. They were doing this partly because – as with us at Amnesty – they opposed the death penalty in all instances, but also because there were grave doubts over Darabi's actual guilt. Her trial wa… Read More

It's 100 days and counting. How should we measure Obama's progress when it comes to the "war on terror"? (Or to update the language, when it comes to mounting overseas contingency operations)?

Is it how soon he closes GuantÃ¡namo? Is it how many torture memos are published? Or is it (even) whether he allows a commission of inquiry into the wider conduct of US personnel in the "war on terror"?

I'd say the answer is: all of the above, but in particular how well President Obama's Administration deals with the issue of detainees at the US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan.

For me Bagram is the true test. Clanging shut the gates of GuantÃ¡namo will be important, so will facilitating greater openness and ensuring that the process of accountability begins to truly uproot the poisonous policy plants that were allowed to grow during the Bush/Cheney/Bybee era.

Is everyone keeping up? First a media storm over a current US president allowing "torture memos" from 2002-5 to be declassified but saying there musn't be any looking in the rear-view mirror over prosecutions.

Then a former CIA chief saying you shouldn't have done what you just did – al-Qai'da will learn all our tricks (though we're not actually using them right now). Next, a former vice-president's retort: no, the methods worked and he's formally requested that the CIA declassify more documents to prove it. In the middle of this: the present White House chief of staff declaring that there would be no attempts to put officials on trial.

Now it's the president again, fresh from his trip to CIA HQ at Langley, saying: no, actually, there might be scope for some officials to be investigated and no, actually, there could even be a… Read More

After a weekend when the blogs have been buzzing non-stop with discussion of the CIA torture memos, I want to ask – why do some commentators appear so eager to justify torture?

Not all commentators, by any means. Many patriotic Americans and friends of America the world over are sincerely horrified at the content of the torture memos. They want to see Osama bin Laden and his cohorts brought to justice but they totally reject the notion that a key arm of a nation's security apparatus should allow itself to sink into the mire along with the terrorists they're trying to capture.

But torture apologists are certainly out there. Here's what they generally argue. Roughly, torture is justified for three reasons: (1) it works – you get results that save lives; (2) it might work, so it's worth trying – you might save live… Read More

The remaining withdrawal of British forces is only weeks away and the stocktaking has begun in earnest. What did the troops achieve in Iraq? Was the sacrifice worth it? What kind of country are they leaving behind?

I don't actually want to open that particular (big) can of worms – civilian deaths in the war and aftermath v. political killings, torture and imprisonment under Saddam Hussein; horrendous sectarian violence v. blanket persecution under the Ba'athists. How to even start on this zero-sum game anyway?

My point is slightly different. It's this: have the Blair and Brown governments been paying attention to what's going on "below the surface" of the headline-grabbing insurgency/counter-insurgency in Iraq?

If we take one example – Kurdistan – I'd say the answer is: no, they haven't. The autonomous region in the north is interesting partly because it's actually been far less violent than many other parts of the country, certainly… Read More

Giving the occasional broadcast interview for Amnesty means, like Lou Reed's druggie anti-hero, you always got to wait. I was waiting for the man from the BBC earlier this week, having arranged to do a "quick" interview in our building's foyer. "It'll only take 10 minutes", I was told. Instead it took an hour and a half. Most of it consumed with waiting for the BBC crew, marooned in bumper-to-bumper east London traffic (c'mon Boris, sort it out!)

Later, I was waiting (and waiting) for Tory MP Michael Fallon ("nailing" Lord Myners) to vacate the BBC interview booth at Millbank, central London. Add in travel and more waiting for this second interview of the day: another hour and half gone.

I'm not complaining. Three hours input for the "output" of two interviews comprising two minutes and 45 seconds on the BBC (which is what it came to) is not as bad… Read More

Why shouldn't the police investigate in the Binyam Mohamed case? I thought this was a case where someone might have been tortured.

Some commentators seem incensed that the Attorney General has referred the Mohamed case to the Metropolitan Police. What would they prefer? That such a senior legal figure within government should try to bury the case and potentially save the government's blushes over possible complicity in acts of torture, rendition (aka kidnapping), illegal detention and whatever else?

If British officials were complicit in a train of events that led to this man being beaten, hung up and mutilated with a scalpel-like implement (among other things), then it seems not unreasonable to expect the police to investigate these crimes. Likewise, if British officials had good reason to suspect that these things had been happening or were likely to, again I would have thought the same applies.

Today Amnesty, my employer, has published new figures on capital punishment worldwide. Basic finding: last year nearly 2,500 people executed in 25 countries; many if most after unfair trials; China is the big offender; actual numbers of countries using capital punishment steadily falling.

The timing's interesting. Because, as I couldn't help noticing, just last week we had back-to-back stories that bore an uncanny relation to two sides of the still-not-dead death penalty debate.

First, we had the deeply sad case of Sean Hodgson, the man from Hampshire who ended up being bars for 27 years, not least because the prosecution service suppressed exculpatory DNA evidence that could have set him free a decade earlier. He was totally innocent, should never have been imprisoned in the first place and on release joins the ranks of those – eventually – rescued from their judicial fate: the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, Stephen… Read More

Maybe I've got an overdeveloped sense of injustice, but if I'd been struck in prison for a crime I didn't commit during 27 of the best years of my life – I might be a hell of a lot angrier than Sean Hodgson seems to be. He's "ecstatic", it's "great to be free", he says. I think I'd be a seething ball of fury, lashing out and condemning the people that had messed up my life.

Or then again, maybe I'd be exactly the same as Hodgson. The dead-hand of imprisonment – year after year of mind-numbing time-serving – might erase the anger, leaving me grateful just to be alive and at liberty.

Hodgson has become a sort of time-traveller. He's gone from the 1970s Life On Mars/Red Riding 1970-80s world to our Twitter- and iPhone-infested age. Last year I met Kenny Richey, the Scottish man who was released… Read More